Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-Vulkan-Video-Merged

by Bender • 2 months ago

126 24 2 months ago

lousken• 2 months ago

Hopefully, it will be in the next ESR

cpeterso• 2 months ago

It should be, unless there are new issues. This code change landed in Firefox 153 Nightly and 153 will become the next ESR version (July 21).

https://whattrainisitnow.com/release/?version=esr

Groxx3• 2 months ago

Oh sweet, now I can look forward to "compiling shaders..." on every website I visit!

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More seriously, I'm definitely curious to try this out on some of my weird computers. Sometimes vulkan support is noticeably more capable than other modes.

soganess5• 2 months ago

There are fairly mainstream devices with decent Vulkan support but poor hardware decode coverage for the codecs people actually get on the web. Polaris era Radeons have H.264 and HEVC decode, but VP9 support is absent (or not exposed in many common Linux paths) so YouTube is sloppy. The Raspberry Pi 5 is another example: it has hardware HEVC decode, but YouTube 4K is generally VP9 or AV1 rather than HEVC, and Pi 5 does not advertise VP9 hardware decode.

Groxx3• 2 months ago

Yea, I'm most-hopeful for some of my lowest-end devices. Those as-cheap-as-possible CPUs tend to have a very strange set of accelerators for codecs.

kcb• 2 months ago

I think Vulkan Video is just another api to access those hardware decoders. It's not going to bring support for codecs to hardware without the support.

TiredOfLife2• 2 months ago

Pi 5 does not advertise VP9 hardware decode

because it does not have it

joe_mamba2• 1 month ago

but VP9 support is absent (or not exposed in many common Linux paths) so YouTube is sloppy [...] but YouTube 4K is generally VP9 or AV1 rather than HEVC

I installed linux yesterday. Youtube doesn't let you backtrack to VP9 in the user profile setting. It serves AV1 by default now for all resolutions. Bummer if you're on older and/or low end hardware.

Maybe some browser extensions can force VP9?

pezezin• 2 months ago

Vulkan Video is about exposing the GPU's hardware encoding/decoding functionality through the standard Vulkan API, not about implementing the codecs through shaders.

WhyNotHugo• 2 months ago

Why does Firefox do first-class video decoding instead of offloading to, for example, ffmpeg?

hparadiz• 2 months ago

Look at the post. It's already using ffmpeg. This just enables it in the build.

QuaternionsBhop• 2 months ago

This is great news for nvidia users on Linux. It means that they don't need to install a VAAPI compatibility tool like nvidia-vaapi-driver. I also hope to see Vulkan Video supported in the open source userspace nvidia driver NVK soon too.

HDBaseT• 2 months ago

Question, what does this mean for Firefox users? Does this help YouTube Video playback? DRM'd content on Netflix?

TingPing• 2 months ago

It doesn’t mean anything for desktop users, it’s just a new standard that could have wider support than VAAPI since it’s part of Vulkan. Mostly embedded devices lacking VAAPI support today, though nvidia requires a third party implementation so this might improve that situation.

xx__yy• 2 months ago

Is it just me or were they a bit behind? Chromium already has it

sstim• 2 months ago

Chromium does not have it.

pjmlp• 2 months ago

Lets see if this works better than VA-API, I could never manage to make it work with Chrome or Firefox, on my now dead netbook.

Since the Flash plugin was gone, watching YT on that device was always software rendering, regardless of the magic incantations between VA-API and browser configuration flags.

Groxx3• 2 months ago

Yea, both netbook-flavored machines I've got have been a struggle with VAAPI (and mostly giving up too). Definitely hoping for some success here, they actually do have vulkan drivers...

Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding

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